Some days, like today, I walk around with U.S. $700 in my back pocket. Malaysia still has a cash-based economy. I once held, in my stubby little fingers, $2000 worth of currency. (It wasn’t mine. Or, rather, it was mine in the sense that I now owed a substantial debt.)

It’s an awesome, awful feeling — all that expensive money, in a wad in your fist, waiting to elide away as rent. All that value eventually to turn into soggy piles of papier-mâché mulch, multicolored and meaningless. Long after that happens, I’ll still be out there somewhere in the raking monsoon rains, hustling and grafting so that I can hold — albeit temporarily — next month’s rent in my hand. [The Sunset Tree.]